So, I guess this is the end …
In case you haven’t noticed, this site has been a bit barren as of late. The simple truth is, both Grokmoo and I no longer play the game anymore, and it doesn’t make sense for us to keep updating the blog if we aren’t keeping up to date ourselves on the multiplayer scene. I’m sorry the end of this blog is so mundane and boring, but it is what it is. We simply just didn’t find the game that much fun anymore, and have moved on to other things. Also, we’re both working full time now, leaving us with a diminished capacity to both play and write about a game full time.
I’m not taking down this site anytime soon, though. There’s a lot of good content on here in the archives and I don’t want to deny anyone access to it (besides, hosting isn’t expensive). We just simply won’t be writing anything new. I put out a call for new writers over a month ago, and we didn’t get any serious takers. There’s no point in continuing to represent this blog as active when nobody is writing for it.
On the off chance that you read this blog for more than merely the Supreme Commander coverage, you may want to check out my personal blog Cyde Weys Musings, which I am still actively writing for. Otherwise, well, it was nice meeting all of you, and hopefully we’ll meet again sometime in the future in the communities of other games. Seacrest out.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
As CydeWeys said, it was a fun ride while it lasted. Unfortunately, the thought of continuing play just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. Thanks to everyone who read the site and posted comments.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
That’s too bad. I always enjoyed reading the articles here.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
all good things must end
August 29th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
I’ve been horribly busy at work all summer. Very sorry I didn’t find time to do more Annihilarity. Hopefully if things are slow in college next month I’ll manage a few panels.
I’ve rather lost interest in multiplayer as well. I think plenty of other people have too. You don’t see much discussion about it as you did a few months ago. I don’t doubt that things will liven up again once Forged Alliance comes out. If the balance is tweaked so there’s more attacking play and economy becomes more focussed on map control then it’d make things alot more interesting to play and to watch/commentate on.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Take care both of you. It was a good time while it lasted. I’m also haven’t played but once or twice all summer, and those times weren’t a whole lot of fun anymore. Who knows, the expansion may spark things up again. And if the expansion doesn’t, just wait till supcom’s system requirements don’t seem like much anymore so everyone can play. I’m sure SupCom will stick around at least as long as TA did (has). SupCom is sure to go down in history as a phenomenal RTS, and this blog as one of its greatest communities.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Well I hate to jump on as the carrion feeder, but SupComUniverse is still planning on being around for a long time. I hope that all the people that visted here will call us home now. And maybe we can pick up some of the items you liked best about this site.
Thanks to Cyde Weys and Grokmoo for the contributions they made, good luck in the future.
Nex.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
I’ve been checking the blog every day, waiting for new posts. You guys have m4d skilz at writing, and I can’t wait to see what you put it to use to.
I actually found this from Cyde Wey’s Musings, so I’ll just swap the RSS feeds, I guess. Well, thanks for doing an amazing job!
August 30th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Sigh… when will the kids realise full time work isn’t the end of all your spare time. Enjoy your lives everyone..
August 30th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Yeah I check here every day for updates and comments, mainly because it is one of the few Supcom sites I can access from work. Ah well, you guys did a great job while it lasted, some really great articles and discussion. I hope that Forged Alliance fixes some of the long-standing problems that Molloy mentioned. I, however, still enjoy multiplayer, especially now that I have a CPU that can actually play 2v2s and 3v3s. I find maps like Open Palms and Blasted Rock still pretty darn fun.
Anyways, thanks for your contribution guys. If anyone here knows of any other great Supcom community sites, please post em!
August 30th, 2007 at 10:22 am
ye thanks guys,i also noticed it was dying- and tbh it sucked. But ya thats how it goes…Supcomlive is good,but it isnt updated as regularly as this used to be.but thanks guys…hope u decide to join us again
August 30th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
The articles on this blog were a big help to many folks and always interesting for SupCom-fans. Too bad it has to end this way, maybe FA will revive things later on?
August 30th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Great, I loved ur supcom blog. I don’t play it anymore either. IMHO the multiplayer was never fixxed.
Maybe there will be a game with SupComs scale in the future that actually works :)
-Skrie 8)
August 30th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
well, no map editor in any RTS game has always been a prelude to a short lived experience…
August 30th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Xan: I definitely think the map editor was a case of too little, too late. By the time it came out the community was already in decline, and it was underwhelming to boot. To really be able to delve into it (especially the scripting!) took a lot of dedication, more than I and many others had. Now compare that to something like the WarCraft III map editor, which anyone can pick up and instantly use to start hacking away at a map.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Sorry to see it go. It was a fun time while it lasted.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:45 am
I wish I had found this site before May, as i think by then it was already in decline. I personally am in the same boat as Clyde and Grok: although i love the game i havent played it in about a month for more than a few reasons.
I think that THQ could market SupCOm as cutting-edge for at least 2 more years, and at the very least i expect some resurgence when FA comes out.
CLyde and Grokmoo, you should know i respect your writing and enjoyed the readers at your site, so good luck to you and hopefully this will once again be a happening place, as they say.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:31 am
Hey, liked your site while it lasted. Didn’t play the game anymore but still checked the site :D!
Thanks for al the effort that has been put in this site and game on!
I think Supcom may be somewhat revived if Forged alliance comes out but not much I guess….
See ya all
August 31st, 2007 at 5:04 am
Hello. You guys wrote awesome articles here and i think it is to bad it will end. I got a idea thou, which is that i and some other players will take on from here and keep writing articles. Im gonna ask Cauldron and ThebigOne and some other guys… Would that be cool for u guys?
How can i contact u better? Im serious in this matter and i do not want this nice blog to die =)
August 31st, 2007 at 5:06 am
Btw. I can promise u all that Forged Alliance will completely change the gameplay to the better. So all of u that have tired of this kinda supcom will probably get what u want with FA. So lets meet in FA :P
August 31st, 2007 at 8:54 am
If only the modability had lived up to the hype, and the map editor had been out sooner, this game would have soared. As it is I still love it.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:15 am
Yea, sad to see you guys go. I very much enjoyed your postings here. I haven’t played SupCom in a long time either, actually switched over to Spring since many of my tournament friends were able to download it and we can play together instead of just the few who had SupCom.
I’ll probably come back to it, just like I did with TA. However, it won’t be till we get some real modding done. I will be back instantly if any good TA conversions come to Supcom. Supcom will probably be in the bargain bin by then, maybe my friends will it buy it too. Until then, see ya around. :)
August 31st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Sir_Loui: Contact details are located on the “Write for us” page. And yeah, if there is anyone still interested in writing here, they’re free to take over the reins. I just was unable to locate anyone; maybe you’ll have better luck?
August 31st, 2007 at 5:32 pm
It is sad that this is over. I hope someone will take the reins.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:43 am
Sir_Loui:
Thanks for the tip on FA, I absolutely hope you are right. And if you can get some of the top players to continue to contribute, you should absolutely do so! There will definitely still be a reader base.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:44 am
I think this says a lot about SupCom itself. Many people have gotten tired of playing, even if they were really into it, and that says something about the base gameplay the game offers. I mean, yeah, getting tired of a game eventually usually happens, but it normally takes more than six months if you’re more than casual. I think it has something to do with the economic model, personally, because it really takes the game away from what you expect it to be — huge, expansive battles — and makes it into something much less interesting — 90% economy, 10% strategy. That’s why I stopped playing a couple months ago, and I’d guess that’s why Cyde has called it quits as well. Even with a job there’s still plenty of time to play, but once you have a job it really becomes a matter of, “Do I really want to use my lessened free time to play this broken game?”
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:39 pm
[...] is. Whenever I stop playing a game that I was previously way into, such as World of Warcraft, and more recently, Supreme Commander, I always end up going back to NetHack for a spell, trying to Ascend another character class that I [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
T2A`: I was going to write a long screed against Supreme Commander’s economic mechanics as the final post, but I realized I just didn’t care enough. Here’s a summary though.
Playing SupCom just feels too much like a chore. The vast majority of the time spent “playing” the game is really just building up an economy, over and over, in exactly the same manner. It’s boring. And then at the very end there’s one attack that usually finishes it off. I don’t find that exciting. Give me the old gameplay balance of Total Annihilation, in which fighting would be frequent, leading to a huge fun war of attrition. The ability to sit in one small spot and just build economic buildings was severely reduced in Total Annihilation; you had to get out there and fight for those metal deposits. Unfortunately, not so much in Supreme Commander. It’s really sad because it wouldn’t take much at all to fix the balance in Supreme Commander and make the game much much more fun.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Cyde Wyes………I agree on the “fun” factor with Supreme Commander. I posted my thoughts several times that there were several factors, some of which you have mentioned that just didn’t make Supreme Commander as much fun as I had hoped it would be.
I also said that I liked some of the advancements that Supreme Commander brought with it’s release, but in comparing the game play to TA, SC lagged behind.
Another factor was the steep pc requirements, which drove players away. But with that said, if a game just isn’t fun, it will have a hard time succeding. TA had a fan base for well over 10 years. That is something to be said and take notice. You have to ask “why” and the answer simply was – “it was a game almost everyone could play, and it was extremely fun.”
I don’t want to beat the drum for TA….I’ve said all along, that I am hoping for a game as entertaining as TA with some great improvements. At this point we’ve got the great improvements but not the entertaining, grab you kind of game we had hoped for. (in my opinion….but apparently shared by others)
I enjoyed your website and column.
Good luck and I will probably give Forced Allegiance a whirl.
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:28 am
Oh no, my favorite website fror Supcom is not anymore :(
I’m sure someone or something will revive it !
I’m looking forward !
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
And so ends the Age of SCT!
People will tell stories about it for generations.
I salute you! (3 gunshots, followed by the Last Post)
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
It saddens me to see you go cyde but i understand why you have. I too rarely play Sup comm nowdays and im on the fence whether i shall get the xpac. Sup comm just doesnt seem to have the shelf life that TA had
This was one of the blogs i checked every day for new entry’s from the moment i discovered it. You and grom are gifted writers and i wish you well in your future endevours. I shall check out your personal blog too, cause if its anything close to calibre that sup com talk was i shall subscribe to it too.
/salute
September 4th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Ok thanks for all the time you put into this site guys, I really enjoyed reading it untill I also found the game boring, which was about a week before the new units, I just went on a losing streak to guys who had better eco than me yet they weren’t attacking at all, made me realise how shit it was, might change in FA but I don’t think I’m gonna get it, I’ve went back to Company of Heroes, that’s all about map control :) Anyway yeah thanks, and I wish you the best.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:08 am
I still love this game. I guess it just depends on who you play. I have never played someone like that and lost.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I guess this is where being a casual player wins for me. I haven’t tired of the game yet. I’m sure I’ll get the expansion, and hope it adds many things to the game that never arrived for the first release.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Hm. Hopefully Forged Alliance will turn a few heads back…school for me started 3 weeks ago, so there isn’t much hope of me writing any articles…
To the best.
September 10th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Rather than try and start a whole new post, I’ll just try tacking onto this one.
I am interested to know what people thought about the story of the game. As everyone knows, this was one of the worst parts of TA; there was very little story whatsoever. Not that it held the game back at all. This was something CT tried to change in this game.
So what did people think about the story? Who did you tend to side with?
September 13th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Story was still pretty barebones imo. the cybran one was ok tho
September 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I haven’t played the campaign so I can’t comment on that, but overall I liked the atmosphere the game had because of the tension between the factions. I personally like to play UEF partly becuase of their art style and unit style. Supposedly the storyline and campaign for Forged Alliance will be a little more involved than that for Supcom, so we’ll see.
September 15th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Attention writers: It would probably be good if you guys tried to keep it alive, like you all have stated. Start by updating with the new FA units!
September 16th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
SupComH is closed now too
September 16th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
come on, bring it back cydeweys.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Great work while it lasted guys. Probably like many others, I found myself coming back and reading the strategy articles and battle reviews long after I stopped regularly playing the game. I definitely sympathize with the reduced time availability due to the working thing – it has a way of making a lot of games less fun, or maybe it just makes us less tolerant of less fun aspects of games. As an earlier poster mentioned, you gotta be discerning with how you spend your time. Take care and good luck!
September 20th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
It was nice reading this blog, so farewell then :)
It still stays in my RSS reader so maybe at sometime in the future I’ll wake up and suprise, a new post :)